


Raise Your Wand for the Fallen

by RogueBelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Gen, Hogwarts, Post - Deathly Hallows, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RogueBelle/pseuds/RogueBelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years later, the effects of the Battle of Hogwarts still ripple on, echoing in the lives of combatants and innocents alike. But what of those too young to fight, destined to come of age in the aftermath?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raise Your Wand for the Fallen

I was twelve years old at the Battle of Hogwarts. Twelve years old, and terrified, and anyone who was there who tells you they weren’t, too, is a liar. Even those bold, brave Gryffindors were fighting through their fear. There was no way to be there and not be afraid.

I was young enough that no one even asked if I wanted to take a stand -- for my family, my friends, or my school.

My brother, though -- he wasn’t quite old enough, but he was tall and broad-shouldered and confident, so no one questioned him. When they sent us off, he slipped away -- never think he abandoned me, never think he lost me in the crowd. He put my hand quite firmly in cousin Tori’s and told her to look after me -- and Tori certainly wasn’t about to run into the fray. I walked the evacuation route with her, while the stones shuddered around us, while the temperature rose despite the fall of night, while my elders talked of reinforcements. She kept petting my hair distractedly, in a way I think was more for her comfort than for mine.

We found his body the next day, when we began to clear the rubble. I say “we,” though really I had nothing to do with it. My parents were now suspect because of their pure blood and their noninterference, and I was twelve years old, twelve and tearful and told to sit quietly until there was news.

We found his body, but we never did figure out which side fired the blast responsible. Officially it went down as a Death Eater, and who was there to argue the point? I know, though, what the history books don’t -- that there were many on the right side who abandoned their moral pretenses, who fired off Unforgiveables with as great alacrity as their opposite numbers. I know their aim was not always what it might’ve been. He didn’t have his tie on when they found him; I’ve always wondered why. The Hat had considered placing him in Ravenclaw, he told me once; I’ve always wondered if he’d still be alive if it had.

When the term began the next fall, the scars still showed -- on the castle, on the students. Re-construction continued throughout my years there. You would think magic would make it easy, and it did, a bit -- the castle has its own regenerative abilities, as it turns out, moreso than anyone had guessed -- but so much had been obliterated. So much could not heal on its own, or not fast enough. It was fascinating, from a certain point of view. 

I was thirteen years old, that first September afterwards, thirteen and tender and grieving, and anyone who says there weren’t repercussions for my House is a liar. A generation grew, still grows, beneath a too-slow-fading shadow. 

And every year, on May the 2nd, we ate breakfast in silence. Every year, on May the 2nd, we remembered.

Never think it didn’t get better; never think us less than resilient, the wizarding population of Britain, dawning in the new millennium. I was eighteen when the Ministry first took me on, eighteen and eager and unchecked, and anyone who says the freedom of the broader world outside our school wasn’t intoxicating is a liar. I ran a little wild, chasing off the still-following shades, but I am a scion of my House nonetheless, and nothing would make me jeopardise my new position.

I have done quite well for myself.

There will be a memorial tonight, at Hogwarts, after the N.E.W.T. examinations are finished, after the Leaving Feast, but no one will leave, they’ll linger, there in the Great Hall, where the stones still show the scorch marks. Everyone’s invited -- provided you were on the right side, or at least ambiguously placed. The Potters will be prominent, no doubt, and the Weasleys, and the Granger-Weasleys. Everyone who fought, everyone who lost someone, everyone who is a student now or was a student then or has been a student in between. I wonder who from the shadows will dare.

And there will come a moment, after the reminiscing and the sorrows and the first round of tears, when someone -- Minister Shacklebolt, perhaps, or the new Headmistress, or maybe they’ll even give the Boy Who Lived, such a man now, the honour -- someone will ask us to raise our wands for the fallen.

And I will. I will raise my wand for Hector Thomas Eldridge, born on the twenty-eighth of February, 1982, dead at the age of sixteen, 2 May 1998. For my brother, who was a casualty, not a hero, one more name on a too-long list. It might have been a Death Eater who killed him, I freely admit it, but it might not have been, too, and good and evil are just names for sides.

I’m a witch full-grown now, grown and guarded and schooled in guile, and anyone who tells you fifteen years is long enough to heal is a liar.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this work, please check out [my blog](http://cassmorriswrites.com)! I also write original fiction, and my debut novel will be out January 2018.


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